It's called "the Event." An unimaginable cataclysm in the 23rd century shatters 600 years of the Earth's timeline into jumbled fragments. Our world is gone: instantly replaced by a new one made of shattered remnants of the past, present and future, all existing alongside one another in a nightmare patchwork of different time "shards"—some hundreds of miles long and others no more than a few feet across.

An alliance is formed: San Diego native Amber Richardson, the young warrior Cam, the supercilious Victorian Phineas Van Seldoot, Blake—a soldier from World War II, the 1880's reporter Nelly Bly, and "Merlin, and who claims to be the time-travelling 23rd century scientist responsible for the Event. Together they reach Merlin's laboratory at the South Pole, only to discover a vortex where the doomsday machine should be. If they enter the vortex, they may find a way to restore time. Or they may die in the chaos of extra-dimensional space.